Chapter 5.—The Son and Holy
Spirit are Not Therefore Less Because Sent. The Son is Sent Also by
Himself. Of the Sending of the Holy Spirit.

7. But being proved wrong so far,
men betake themselves to saying, that he who sends is greater than
he who is sent: therefore the Father is greater than the Son,
because the Son continually speaks of Himself as being sent by the
Father; and the Father is also greater than the Holy Spirit,
because Jesus has said of the Spirit, “Whom the Father will send
in my name;”225225John xiv. 26 and the Holy
Spirit is less than both, because both the Father sends Him, as we
have said, and the Son, when He says, “But if I depart, I will
send Him unto you.” I first ask, then, in this inquiry, whence
and whither the Son was sent. “I,” He says, “came forth from
the Father, and am come into the world.”226226John xvi. 7, 28 Therefore, to be sent, is to come
forth forth from the Father, and to come into the world. What,
then, is that which the same evangelist says concerning Him, “He
was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
Him not;” and then he adds, “He came unto His own?”227227John i. 10, 11 Certainly He
was sent thither, whither He came; but if He was sent into the
world, because He came forth from the Father, then He both came
into the world and was in the world. He was sent therefore thither,
where He already was. For consider that, too, which is written in
the prophet, that God said, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?”228228Jer. xxiii. 24 If this is
said of the Son (for some will have it understood that the Son
Himself spoke either by the prophets or in the prophets), whither
was He sent except to the place where He already was? For He who
says, “I fill heaven and earth,” was everywhere. But if it is
said of the Father, where could He be without His own word and
without His own wisdom, which “reacheth from one end to another
mightily, and sweetly ordereth all things?”229229Wisd. viii. 1 But He cannot be anywhere without
His own Spirit. Therefore, if God is everywhere, His Spirit also is
everywhere. Therefore, the Holy Spirit, too, was sent thither,
where He already was. For he, too, who finds no place to which he
might go from the presence of God, and who says, “If I ascend up
into heaven, Thou art there; if I shall go down into hell, behold,
Thou art there;” wishing it to be understood that God is present
everywhere, named in the previous verse His Spirit; for He says,”
Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from
Thy presence?”230230Ps. cxxxix. 8, 7

8. For this reason, then, if both
the Son and the Holy Spirit are sent thither where they were, we
must inquire, how that sending, whether of the Son or of the Holy
Spirit, is to be understood; for of the Father alone, we nowhere
read that He is sent. Now, of the Son, the apostle writes thus:
“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His
Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were
under the law.”231231Gal. iv. 4, 5 “He
sent,” he says, “His Son, made of a woman.” And by this term,
woman,232232Mulier what
Catholic does not know that he did not wish to signify the
privation of virginity; but, according to a Hebraism, the
difference of sex? When, therefore, he says, “God sent His Son,
made of a woman,” he sufficiently shows that the Son was
“sent” in this very way, in that He was “made of a woman.”
Therefore, in that He was born of God, He was in the world; but in
that He was born of Mary, He was sent and came into the world.
Moreover, He could not be sent by the Father without the Holy
Spirit, not only because the Father, when He sent Him, that is,
when He made Him of a woman, is certainly understood not to have so
made Him without His own Spirit; but also because it is most
plainly and expressly said in the Gospel in answer to the Virgin
Mary, when she asked of the angel, 41“How shall this be?” “The
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee.”233233Luke i. 34, 35 And Matthew says, “She was found
with child of the Holy Ghost.”234234Matt. i. 18 Although, too, in the prophet
Isaiah, Christ Himself is understood to say of His own future
advent, “And now the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent me.”235235Isa. xlviii. 16

9. Perhaps some one may wish to
drive us to say, that the Son is sent also by Himself, because the
conception and childbirth of Mary is the working of the Trinity, by
whose act of creating all things are created. And how, he will go
on to say, has the Father sent Him, if He sent Himself? To whom I
answer first, by asking him to tell me, if he can, in what manner
the Father hath sanctified Him, if He hath sanctified Himself? For
the same Lord says both; “Say ye of Him,” He says, “whom the
Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest,
because I said, I am the Son of God;”236236John x. 36 while in another place He says,
“And for their sake I sanctify myself.”237237John xvii. 19 I ask, also, in what manner the
Father delivered Him, if He delivered Himself? For the Apostle Paul
says both: “Who,” he says, “spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all;”238238Rom. viii. 32 while elsewhere he says of the
Saviour Himself, “Who loved me, and delivered Himself for
me.”239239Gal. ii. 20 He will
reply, I suppose, if he has a right sense in these things, Because
the will of the Father and the Son is one, and their working
indivisible. In like manner, then, let him understand the
incarnation and nativity of the Virgin, wherein the Son is
understood as sent, to have been wrought by one and the same
operation of the Father and of the Son indivisibly; the Holy Spirit
certainly not being thence excluded, of whom it is expressly said,
“She was found with child by the Holy Ghost.” For perhaps our
meaning will be more plainly unfolded, if we ask in what manner God
sent His Son. He commanded that He should come, and He, complying
with the commandment, came. Did He then request, or did He only
suggest? But whichever of these it was, certainly it was done by a
word, and the Word of God is the Son of God Himself. Wherefore,
since the Father sent Him by a word, His being sent was the work of
both the Father and His Word; therefore the same Son was sent by
the Father and the Son, because the Son Himself is the Word of the
Father. For who would embrace so impious an opinion as to think the
Father to have uttered a word in time, in order that the eternal
Son might thereby be sent and might appear in the flesh in the
fullness of time? But assuredly it was in that Word of God itself
which was in the beginning with God and was God, namely, in the
wisdom itself of God, apart from time, at what time that wisdom
must needs appear in the flesh. Therefore, since without any
commencement of time, the Word was in the beginning, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God, it was in the Word itself
without any time, at what time the Word was to be made flesh and
dwell among us.240240John i. 1, 2, 14 And when
this fullness of time had come, “God sent His Son, made of a
woman,”241241Gal. iv. 4 that is,
made in time, that the Incarnate Word might appear to men; while it
was in that Word Himself, apart from time, at what time this was to
be done; for the order of times is in the eternal wisdom of God
without time. Since, then, that the Son should appear in the flesh
was wrought by both the Father and the Son, it is fitly said that
He who appeared in that flesh was sent, and that He who did not
appear in it, sent Him; because those things which are transacted
outwardly before the bodily eyes have their existence from the
inward structure (apparatu) of the spiritual nature, and on
that account are fitly said to be sent. Further, that form of man
which He took is the person of the Son, not also of the Father; on
which account the invisible Father, together with the Son, who with
the Father is invisible, is said to have sent the same Son by
making Him visible. But if He became visible in such way as to
cease to be invisible with the Father, that is, if the substance of
the invisible Word were turned by a change and transition into a
visible creature, then the Son would be so understood to be sent by
the Father, that He would be found to be only sent; not also, with
the Father, sending. But since He so took the form of a servant, as
that the unchangeable form of God remained, it is clear that that
which became apparent in the Son was done by the Father and the Son
not being apparent; that is, that by the invisible Father, with the
invisible Son, the same Son Himself was sent so as to be visible.
Why, therefore, does He say, “Neither came I of myself?” This,
we may now say, is said according to the form of a servant, in the
same way as it is said, “I judge no man.”242242John viii. 42, 15

10. If, therefore, He is said to be
sent, in so far as He appeared outwardly in the bodily creature,
who inwardly in His spiritual nature is always hidden from the eyes
of mortals, it is now easy to understand also of the Holy
42Spirit
why He too is said to be sent. For in due time a certain outward
appearance of the creature was wrought, wherein the Holy Spirit
might be visibly shown; whether when He descended upon the Lord
Himself in a bodily shape as a dove,243243Matt. iii. 16 or when, ten days having past since
His ascension, on the day of Pentecost a sound came suddenly from
heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and cloven tongues like as of
fire were seen upon them, and it sat upon each of them.244244Acts ii. 2–4 This
operation, visibly exhibited, and presented to mortal eyes, is
called the sending of the Holy Spirit; not that His very substance
appeared, in which He himself also is invisible and unchangeable,
like the Father and the Son, but that the hearts of men, touched by
things seen outwardly, might be turned from the manifestation in
time of Him as coming to His hidden eternity as ever
present.